This article examines the relevance of co-research – a militant practice rooted in Italian workerist traditions – as a critical tool for analysing and transforming social relations under platform capitalism. By situating co-research within broader debates on engaged social inquiry, the author distinguishes it from sociological research, workers’ inquiry and action research, thus emphasizing its indeterminate, recursive process of knowledge co-production aimed at class autonomy. Key concepts such as class composition and subjectivity are explored to contextualize co-research’s historical emergence in Fordist factories and its adaptability to contemporary digital labour. Through a case study on food-delivery riders, the article highlights the dual role played by algorithmic management in enforcing control and enabling resistance. It argues that platform capitalism’s hyperindustrialisation of social reproduction demands renewed attention to ambivalence within digital connectivity, where informal practices and counter-organization can challenge performative subjectivity and heterodirected autonomy. The analysis underscores co-research’s potential to decode technical and political compositions of labour, thus fostering collective agency amid fragmented, individualized work regimes.